The following is excerpted from Army of None: Strategies to Counter Military Recruitment, End War and Build a Better World © Aimee Allison and David Solnit, Seven Stories Press, August 2007

1. Recruiters lie. According the New York Times, nearly one of five United States Army recruiters was under investigation in 2004 for offenses varying from "threats and coercion to false promises that applicants would not be sent to Iraq." One veteran recruiter told a reporter for the Albany Times Union, "I've been recruiting for years, and I don't know one recruiter who wasn't dishonest about it. I did it myself."

2. The military contract guarantees nothing. The Department of Defense's own enlistment/re-enlistment document states, "Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay allowances, benefits and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/re-enlistment document" (DD Form4/1, 1998, Sec.9.5b).

3. Advertised signing bonuses are bogus. Bonuses are often thought of as gifts, but they're not. They're like loans: If an enlistee leaves the military before his or her agreed term of service, he or she will be forced to repay the bonus. Besides, Army data shows that the top bonus of $20,000 was given to only 6 percent of the 47,7272 enlistees who signed up for active duty.

4. The military won't make you financially secure. Military members are no strangers to financial strain: 48 percent report having financial difficulty, approximately 33 percent of homeless men in the United States are veterans, and nearly 200,000 veterans are homeless on any given night.

5. Money for college ($71,424 in the bank?). If you expect the military to pay for college, better read the fine print. Among recruits who sign up for the Montgomery GI Bill, 65 percent receive no money for college, and only 15 percent ever receive a college degree. The maximum Montgomery GI Bill benefit is $37,224, and even this 37K is hard to get: To join, you must first put in a nonrefundable $1,200 deposit that has to be paid to the military during the first year of service. To receive the $37K, you must also be an active-duty member who has completed at least a three-year service agreement and is attending a four-year college full time. Benefits are significantly lower if you are going to school part-time or attending a two-year college. If you receive a less than honorable discharge (as one in four do), leave the military early (as one in three do), or later decide not to go to college, the military will keep your deposit and give you nothing. Note: The $71,424 advertised by the Army and $86,000 by the Navy includes benefits from the Amy or Navy College Fund, respectively. Fewer than 10 percent of all recruits earn money from the Army College Fund, which is specifically designed to lure recruits into hard-to-fill positions.

6. Job training. Vice President Dick Cheney once said, "The military is not a social welfare agency; it's not a jobs program." If you enlist, the military does not have to place you in your chosen career field or give you the specific training requested. Even if enlistees do receive training, it is often to develop skills that will not transfer to the civilian job market. (There aren't many jobs for M240 machine-gunners stateside.)

7. War, combat, and your contract. First off, if it's your first time enlisting, you're signing up for eight years. On top of that, the military can, without your consent, extend active-duty obligations during times of conflict, "national emergency," or when directed by the president. This means that even if an enlistee has two weeks left on his/ her contract (yes, even Guard/Reserve) or has already served in combat, she/he can still be sent to war. More than a dozen U.S. soldiers have challenged "stop-loss" measures like these in court so far, but people continue to be shipped off involuntarily. The military has called thousands up from Inactive Ready Reserve -- soldiers who have served, some for as long as a decade, and been discharged. The numbers: twice as many troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan per year as during the Vietnam War. One-third of the troops who have gone to Iraq have gone more than once. The highest rate of first- time deployments belongs to the Marine Corps Reserve: almost 90 percent have fought.

www.alternet.org/story/62945/

More, more, more, how you like it,? how you like it,? more, more, more...

This sticker mysteriously appeared during NCOR offering solidarity with the "bike bomber of New York"

That's pretty f*cked. He should be sitting in a cage in Gitmo.

bombing a million iraqi civilians is merely u.s. foreign policy.

but bombing an empty building responsible for these million dead civilians and over 4,000 dead u.s. soldiers is grounds for imprisonment? it is you, bruno, who is f*cked.

We need to build an army of fighters that are willing to take the struggle to the next level in order to counter the state terrorism sponsored by the USS imperialist state and its allies everywhere! Praying for peace and going to cattle marches sponsored by authoritarian and reactionary groups like ANSWER and UFPJ is not longer enough! It's time we move into a truly revolutionary stage in the fight against this fascist, racist police state we are living in! If this guy has the courage (I bet he also knows the consequences of it) to do something different, why can't others do the same or more? Youth of North America, all the oppressed peoples of the world is waiting for you to act more decisively and join the struggle for world-wide liberation from capitalist oppression! The time is now or never!

Yeah, so we can replace this horrible free society with one that punishes free thought and spoken opinion. I've seen how this site operates when it comes to opposing views. Fascist? Take a look at yourself, my friend.

OK, first of all, whoever pulled this off needs to take a long look in the mirror. You bombed a building to further your political agenda. At best that makes you a hypocrite, at worst it makes you a terrorist. OH NO!! I used th "T" word! Well, it fits. Go to google and type define:terrorist and see what the results are.

As for that "Army of None," I have a few comments.

While your ideals are admirable, and I must say that I personally would love to see an end to all violence and hatred throughout the known universe and beyond, it is a goal that is completely unattainable. This world is far too screwed up with religious zealot whack jobs and greedy politicians to EVER have true and lasting peace. Humanity is diseased and cruel, and it sucks, but that's how it is.

I would also like to respond to the claims you posted.

1- SOME recruiters lie. 1 in 5 is not ALL. It's 1 in 5. And those people are dead wrong, no questions about it. One of the best recruiters I know is a guy who tells it straight, doesn't try to bullshit anyone. He doesn't get many people to sign up, but his honesty means he is getting committed and motivated people who know what's going on and won't whine about their contract.

2- That's the nature of the beast. Potential recruits hear this about nine hundred thousand times during MEPS processing. It's known as the "Needs of the Army" clause. It sucks, but thems the breaks. Read your contract.

3- The contract states that if a soldier leaves military service for any reason OTHER THAN A MEDICAL DISCHARGE before completion of the agreed term of service, the bonus must be repayed. That means that if you are a shitbag and get chaptered out or put in jail, you have to give back that bonus. If you get hurt or blown up or shot and are deemed medically unfit for duty, you will be mediaclly discharged and you keep your bonus, along with severance pay and VA disability entitlements until the day you die.

4- Of those families facing financial hardship, how many of them have tried taking advantage of the many programs in place to offer them relief? There are lots of programs such as Army Emergency Relief, the Red Cross, and other private organizations that will often GIVE a soldier money to take care of a burden.

5- Again, it says so in the contract. I went to school part time while on active duty and they paid for every damn minute of it. Now that I am out, I have to go to a full time school for them to foot the bill. The GI Bill is not intended to pay for your schooling; it is there to provide you with financial assistance while you go to school, so you don't wind up working 8 hours after a 10 hour school day. It isn't much, but it helps. Also, while on active duty, soldiers qualify for a large amount of tuition assistance to attend a school of their choice.

6- More misinformation. The military has more non-combat jobs than anything else. Aviation trades, mechanial, construction, personnel management, administrative, press positions, cartography, computer jobs, telecommunications, you freakin name it and they have a civilian equivalent. I spent 11 years working on Apaches and I have had little difficulty finding a job in the aviation world.

7- Stopp-Loss is a grade A one hundred percent son of a motherless bitch. I got hit with it twice, but I still got out when I was supposed to. Why? Because it was lifted before the end of my enlistment. A few more facts about Stop-Loss: it very rarely affects the entire military. It usually (90 percent of the time) hits units or jobs that are under-strength, meaning they don't have enough people. It can also hit a unit that is about to deploy, to keep experienced soldiers from transferring to a different duty station before the unit takes the field. And yes, every term of enlistment is 8 years long, but not all of that is active duty. You may have 4 years of AD followed by 4 years of Inactive Ready Reserve (IRR) time. This mandatory 8 years is known as the Military Service Obligation, or MSO. HOWEVER, if you remain on active duty long enough to cover your MSO, 8 years, for example, you WILL NOT be placed on IRR status. I was in for 11 years of active duty, and when I went home my time was done. Finito. No mas. They CANNOT call me back up. PERIOD. I was enlisted, however, and I do not know how this policy affects commissioned officers.

I'm not trying to be a peckerhead or a warmonger. I hate wars. I wish we could find a better way to resolve our problems as a species. But please, before you try to cut the legs out from under people who already have a pretty tough life, get all your facts straight.

And no, I am not now nor have I ever been a recruiter.